Chapter 8

8

Saturday, 11/2/24–Monday, 11/4/24

My mom called first thing the following morning. "I'm downstairs," she said brightly. "Outside your building. I thought I could take you to breakfast."

"Oh! Um." I sat up, looking around wildly. I wasn't in my building, was the first problem that presented itself. I was in Greer's building. More specifically, I was in Greer's bed —well, Bri's bed, technically, which Greer had taken to sleeping in. "I, um. I have class?"

I realized a beat too late that it was Saturday, but my mom was already laughing, the sound of it warm and familiar on the other end of the phone. "I'm kidding, sweetheart," she promised, "but your horrified voice is something that will stay with me long into the future, so thank you for that."

"I'm not horrified, " I protested, feeling a little ashamed of myself. "I just—"

"Don't relish the idea of your mother showing up unannounced outside your college dorm?" she asked. "I suppose you can be forgiven."

"Thank you."

We talked for a little while, catching up on the hygiene kits she was putting together for her mutual aid group and the hike in the White Mountains she was doing with her dorky boyfriend Paul. She'd been calling more frequently since I'd told her about Bri, I'd noticed, making cheerful conversation while probing carefully around the edges of my life, looking for snags in the fabric. "How are you doing?" she asked me finally. "You doing okay?"

I glanced at Greer, still asleep with one elegant arm slung over her face. I thought of Holiday's voice yesterday on the phone. I remembered the meeting I still hadn't scheduled with Professor McMorrow, knowing even as I made a mental note to do it sometime this week that I probably wasn't going to. "I am," I promised quietly. "I'm doing okay."

"Holiday says you're back with your girlfriend."

"Okay," I said, squeezing my eyes shut. "Very nice. Goodbye, Mother!"

"I'm just asking!" she insisted, her laugh high and musical. She was still chuckling to herself when I hung up the phone.

Holiday was visiting friends at NYU for the weekend, which meant three full days before we could meet to make a game plan for investigating whatever had happened to Bri. "You don't want to skip your trip, do you?" I'd asked hopefully; when the question was met only with withering silence on the other end of the phone, I winced. "Not skipping it!" I amended. "Enough said."

I spent the weekend trying to distract myself, going for my usual Saturday run along the river and meeting with my group for a project in Race, Gender, and Performance. Coach had scheduled an all-team workout on Sunday afternoon—lacrosse was a spring sport, technically, but we met at the gym three times a week all through the fall, building muscle and endurance and, ostensibly, team spirit, though that last part was something of a going concern.

I changed my clothes in the locker room, nodding at my teammates as I took my place on the treadmill and jammed my headphones into my ears. Something felt strange, though, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was: the quiet, I realized belatedly, a palpable peace that had been missing all semester long. Nobody slapping me a little too hard between the shoulder blades. Nobody threatening to make me eat a turtle. "Where's Hunter?" I asked, yanking out an earbud.

"Dude," Cam said from the treadmill beside me. "You didn't hear? He's suspended."

I blinked, breaking my stride and almost losing my footing. "From school?"

Cam shook his head. "Just from practice, I think. He beat the shit out of that kid Oliver for being too mouthy."

"Seriously?" That startled me; Hunter was a douchebag and a bully, absolutely, but to hurt someone so badly he risked his place on the team?

"It was a whole thing," Cam continued, still sprinting merrily along on the neighboring treadmill. "Oliver wasn't going to rat him out or anything, but Hunter knocked his tooth out and Coach didn't buy his story about falling out of his bunk bed." He shook his head. "I don't know. Hunter's always been a dick, but it feels like he's getting worse lately. Your girl Greer was right to dump him when she did."

I fell right the fuck off the treadmill. "I'm sorry," I said, sprawled on my ass on the industrial carpet, "what?"

Right away, Cam looked like he wished a giant eagle would swoop down from the sky and carry him off into the ether, never to be heard from again. "Oh, fuck me," he said. "Dude, are you okay?" He winced. "Bro, I thought you knew."

"I did…not know," I clarified, getting clumsily to my feet.

"Clearly," Cam said, rubbing a hand over his face. "I see that now. But, dude, how did Hunter not say anything? Like, the guy is not exactly what one might call subtle. I would have bet money that at some point he'd been like, Yo, Linden, just FYI, I spent most of last year giving your ex the busine— "

"Enough," I interrupted, more loudly than I meant to. Obviously, Greer and I had been apart last year. Of course I knew intellectually that she didn't owe me anything, that she was allowed to date whoever she wanted. I could have recited Holiday's lecture myself.

Still, though: Hunter?

"Dude," Cam tried now, "I didn't mean to—"

But I waved him off, getting back on the treadmill and punching the speed up as high as it would go. "Don't worry about it," I said. "Let's just get through this, all right?"

"Sure, bro," Cam said. "Let's just get through it."

I found Greer on the third floor of the library. For a person who, in all honesty, had never been much of a reader, I'd loved the Widener since the moment I'd first stepped onto Harvard's campus: the grand marble staircases and the intricate Greek columns, the soaring murals by John Singer Sargent and the study lamps shaded with glass. It felt like the kind of place you could conceivably find a portal to another dimension. It felt like the kind of place you might go to think deep thoughts.

"You and Hunter used to date ?" I asked when I spotted her sitting at a carrel in the corner, a big plaid scarf wrapped around her like a blanket as she squinted at a dense-looking bio textbook, her hair in a thick, glossy braid over one shoulder.

For a moment Greer just looked at me. Then, very calmly, she closed her book and set down her highlighter. "Hello to you too."

"How could you not have told me that?" I asked, trying not to sound as wounded as I felt. I didn't want to act like a girl about this, but shit. "This whole time."

Greer pushed her chair back, turning to face me. "First of all," she said, using one finger to draw an imaginary circle around my person, "did you even bother to shower before you came over here to show your sweaty ass to everyone on campus?" She wrinkled her nose underneath her glasses. "Second of all, I'm allowed to not tell you things, Linden. The two of us hanging out again doesn't automatically entitle you to all of me."

"I'm not saying it does!" I argued, loudly enough that a girl at a neighboring carrel looked up from her laptop and shot me an exquisitely dirty look. "All I'm saying is that it would have been nice to know, when Hunter was making my life a living hell for the last two months, that it wasn't actually personal."

"Of course it was personal." Greer rolled her eyes. "Did you somehow miss the memo about your extremely punchable face?"

I didn't laugh. "Is this not a big deal to you?" I asked. "You and me? Because I gotta tell you, Greer, maybe it's not cool of me to say or whatever, but it's a big deal to me. You're a big deal to me." I scrubbed a hand over the back of my head. "You always have been."

Greer gazed at me for another long moment. Then she sighed. "We were together for like twenty minutes last spring," she told me. "I don't even think it was exclusive, on his part. I broke it off before finals for like…obvious reasons—"

"He can't read?" I supplied dryly.

Greer's expression was supremely unimpressed. "He…does not have a rich inner life," she continued, as if I hadn't spoken. "And he, like, did not take it great, so you'll have to forgive me if it's not the story I like to lead with when I'm talking to"—she waved a hand in my general direction—"potential suitors."

That stopped me, the skin on my lower back prickling as I thought about Oliver's busted tooth. All at once, I forgot I was pissed. "What do you mean, he didn't take it great?"

Greer shrugged inside her sweatshirt, tugging the scarf more tightly around her. "You've met him," she said, like that should have been enough of an explanation. "It wasn't a big deal. He just said a bunch of nasty stuff, that's all. Left a couple of choice comments on my Instagram. Real charmer." Greer sighed then, holding her hands out like, What do you want from me? "In case it wasn't abundantly clear, Linden, I'm already not having the best week of my entire life. And I have to study if I don't want to wind up commuting to Western Connecticut State University for spring semester, so." Her eyes filled with tears behind her glasses. "Fuck off, okay?"

Right away, I felt like the biggest asshole who'd ever lived. "I'm sorry," I said, reaching for her—pulling her out of her chair and wrapping my arms around her, ignoring the exaggerated sigh of Irritated Laptop Girl one carrel over. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm being a weirdo."

"You really are," Greer agreed, but she let me hold her—her body deflating a little as she wrapped her arms around my neck and hung there for a moment, letting me take her weight. "It sucked, okay?" she mumbled into my chest, her voice muffled against my hoodie. "The whole thing with Hunter."

"I hear you," I said quietly. "We don't have to—I mean, your business is your business. I didn't mean to, like, pry."

"Thank you," she said—or that was what it sounded like, anyway; I was momentarily distracted by Laptop Girl slamming her computer shut and huffing off into the dimly lit stacks. "I appreciate that."

"I gotta say, though," I ventured, smoothing my palms over the warm cotton of Greer's sweatshirt, breathing in her cherry ChapStick smell, "I don't really think I qualify as a potential suitor at this point."

Greer snorted. "Oh no?" she asked, pulling back and tilting her face up to look at me. "Then what are you, exactly?"

I shrugged inside her arms. "You tell me."

Greer seemed to consider that. For a second it seemed like she might be about to soften; for a second it even seemed like she might be about to kiss me, but in the end she just smiled and ducked neatly out of my grip. "I don't think I will," she said sweetly, then turned to collect her textbooks, sliding her stuff back into her bag. "Come on," she said, slinging it over her shoulder and lacing her fingers through mine, tugging me toward the staircase. "Let's go get something to eat."